Around seven, Grace announces that Julia should probably get some rest. Exhausted from the emotional roller coaster I’ve been riding all day, I agree, and explain to Julia that although I have to work the next day, I’ll be back in the evening.
“Okay,” she says nonchalantly, as though I just informed her tonight’s Jell-O would be lime flavored. I remind myself not to take it personally.
Grace follows us into the hallway. “I know this isn’t easy, and I really appreciate everything you’ve done,” she says, embracing me. “Jim’s right; I would have gone out of my mind if I didn’t know that you were here.” She sighs, looking even older than yesterday under the unyielding glare of the fluorescent hospital lights. “You have my cell if you need to get ahold of me. We’re staying at Julia’s apartment for now. I don’t imagine that we’ll be there much over the next few days, but at some point we’re going to have to get some of her things together so we can take her back to Ann Arbor.”
“What?” Grace’s words throw me: Of all the things that I’ve considered over the last few days, Julia leaving New York was not one of them. Her entire social circle is here, not to mention her job. Julia may not have made it as a professional dancer, but she revels in her publicist position at the Ballet, and lives to dance with her recreational corps. Ann Arbor may be her first home, but it’s miles from her passion, and I have to think that there’s no way that can be good for her recovery.
Sensing my anxiety, Grace tells me, “Sweetheart, the doctor says that some people with traumatic brain injury are never able to return to their normal lives.” I can’t help but notice that she sounds like she barely believes what she’s saying. “Obviously, we hope Julia is not one of them. She’s a fighter, and that makes me optimistic, maybe more than I should be. But you saw her back there. She’s going to need at least a year of rehab, and constant monitoring for at least the first two months. Jim and I can’t just pick up and leave Michigan.”
“But—” Logically, I know she is going to need help. Lots of it. Help that I can’t give her. Emotionally, I cannot bear the thought of my best friend halfway across the country when I just came so close to losing her.
Dave interjects. “Marissa, it’s been a long day. Let’s have this conversation tomorrow.”
I nod, although what I really want is to behave like Julia did earlier; I want to scream and throw a fit and tell Grace that I hate her, even though I know she doesn’t deserve it. But as raw as I feel right now, I don’t have it in me to make a scene. And so I say good night and walk away.
Back at my apartment, Dave and I order takeout and eat silently in front of the TV. When we get in bed, he wraps his arms tightly around me and presses his face into the nape of my neck. “I love you,” he whispers to me. “It’s going to be okay.”
I don’t respond. Because the only thing I can think is, I am all alone.
Four
I should be working; the final copy for my stories is due at the end of the week. Instead, I’m browsing Wikipedia entries on traumatic brain injury.
“A subdural hematoma occurs between the dura and the brain membrane . . .”
Wrong! I hit “edit” at the right side of the page.
“. . . actually occurs within the dura, rather than beneath it as the name implies,” I type in, adding a link to the National Institutes of Health site I pinched the info from.
I’ve been at this for an hour and have corrected three errors already. Each one makes me feel a little less stressed.
“Marissa?”
My boss’s voice startles me so much that I jump a few inches out of my Aeron chair.
“Hey, Naomi,” I say, trying to look nonchalant as I quickly click the Wikipedia page closed and spin around to face her.
“Can I?” she asks, gesturing to a stool next to my desk. She sits down before I have a chance to answer. Damn. This means she’s not just swinging by to gossip about the last episode of Lost.
“I wanted to see how you’re doing,” she says.
“Great,” I respond, looking her straight in the eye as if to say, See? I’m fine.
“Are you sure?” she asks. Her brown eyes crinkle at the corners, making her look as gentle and motherly as she is. “Because you know it’s okay if you’re not, right? You can be honest with me.”
Damn. I should have known that Naomi—who has volunteered for every charity organization known to man and, as a result, speaks empathy as a second language—would see right through me. The truth is, I am so not okay. It’s been three weeks since the accident, and although Julia is now correctly identifying me and no longer seems to want me dead, she’s still undeniably touch-and-go.
Then there’s the fact that I’m exhausted. I’ve spent every nonwork second with Julia. Going with her whenever I can to roundthe-clock appointments with neurologists, neuropsychologists, speech therapists, physical therapists, and occupational therapists (and those are just the ones I can remember). Quizzing her on vocabulary. Catching her up on all of the trivial things going on with our friends and fielding calls from her coworkers, who are anxious to hear about her progress and who are still hoping in vain that she’ll return to the office. Waiting for some sign that Julia’s going to start acting like herself again.
But I’m not ready to admit this out loud. I have been gunning for a promotion to deputy editor all year and I am not about to let the tiniest crack in my armor jeopardize my chances.
“I’m fine. Promise,” I say, cocking my head to the side and smiling like a pageant contestant—a gesture, I realize as I’m doing it, that I’ve snatched straight from Julia’s playbook. “I’ve already finished the last round of edits for the metabolism article and have almost wrapped up the wacky diet secrets story.” It’s true. I haven’t fallen behind as much as you’d expect from someone who spends half the day doing research on something completely unrelated to her job, because when it comes down to it, I care too much about what other people think to visibly fall apart.
“Of course you have,” Naomi says with a grin. Unlike the rest of my coworkers, who have been whittled by years of low-carb diets and triathlon training, she is neither thin nor particularly athletic, and has zero qualms about eating a Big Mac and fries in the middle of an edit meeting. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, she is the most wellliked person in our office. We’ve gotten on famously since she interviewed me five years ago, and I’d be lying if I said that she wasn’t a big part of the reason that I moved up the ladder so quickly at Svelte.
“Marissa, you know I think the world of you, and Lynne”—our editor-in-chief—“does, too.”
“Thank you,” I say sincerely.
“The thing is, you haven’t taken a real vacation in close to two years. And taking three days off to be at the hospital with your friend does not count.”
“But—”
“Two years,” Naomi says again, making it sound much worse than it really is.
“I’ve been busy. You know Claire quit and my pages doubled and—”
“Honey, no offense, but we’re a pretty well-oiled ship. I think we can manage without you for a little bit. In fact, that’s why Lynne and I want you to take at least a week off before December.”
“That soon? But I’m—”
Naomi wags her finger at me. “No excuses. You need a break. Go do something fun.”
At three o’clock, I make a Starbucks run for what will be my second venti cappuccino since this morning. Yes, I have a bit of a caffeine problem. But coffee seems so low on the totem pole of addiction that I can’t be bothered to do anything about it, and at this point, I’m not sure how else to get through my day.
A week off. No excuses. What the heck am I going to do with myself? After all, Julia is going home to Ann Arbor with Grace and Jim in a week. Dave is working around the clock like usual, and although it’s tempting, I’m not the type to jump on a flight to Kauai by myself.
“Anything else?” the heavily tattooed barista asks after I order my drink.
I eye the pastry case. As someone who has gained and shed the same fifteen pounds more times than I care to count (and who is currently on the losing side of that battle), I don’t really do sweets. And since I’ve been working at a health magazine, I’ve been especially cautious; my coworkers may give Naomi a pass, but I have little doubt that my days as a diet editor would be numbered if I let myself turn into the heifer my stubborn DNA mandates.
But I suddenly feel ravenous, like I’ve been doing the Master Cleanse for a month.
“I’ll take a chocolate cupcake,” I say. I open my wallet to see how much cash I have. “Actually, I’ll take a vanilla one, too.”
When I arrive at Julia’s apartment that evening, she is wearing a new purple robe.
“Do you like it?” she asks, searching my face for a sign that I do.
“Of course,” I assure her, although the bulky, nearly fluorescent frock makes her look like she’s auditioning to be Barney. Moreover, it’s yet another reminder of how things have changed. Before her accident, Julia was on a first-name basis with the salesgirls at the city’s chicest boutiques, thanks to the fact that her parents heavily subsidized her moderate salary. But over the past few weeks, Julia has been requesting purple. Lots of purple. When she went through her closet—full of dark denim and thin-knit cashmere sweaters—she slammed the door closed with a disgusted look on her face. “These look like they belong to an old lady.”
“She insisted on purple, and it was the only thing I could find on short notice,” Grace whispers to me. According to one of Julia’s neurologists, fixations such as her newfound love of all things lavender are a common side effect of brain injury. “She might grow out of it,” the doctor informed Grace and me. But her completely unconvincing tone leveled the hope I’d been feeling that day after Julia, a Scrabble champion, used the word “collude.”
“So, Jules, what’s been going on?” I ask her, hanging my bag on the door hook and plopping down on the end of her bed.
“Oh, you know. A little of this, a little of that,” she says, sounding weirdly secretive, her voice still several octaves too high.
“What do you mean?”
She leans toward me and whispers, “I don’t want to say too much. Mom’s here.”
I glance over at Grace, who is sitting in an armchair in the corner of the room. Of course I feel bad for her, maybe even worse than I feel for myself—which is saying a lot, given the vat of self-pity I’ve been wallowing in lately. At the same time, I am a little irritated with the woman who mothered me all these years. She has become a permanent fixture in Julia’s one-room apartment, and while I can’t fault her for her devotion, I also can’t help but think that she’s monitoring my every interaction with her daughter.
“Just stick to simple conversations,” she instructed me the first day Julia was home, as though I hadn’t just spent the past week with her in the hospital.
“But the doctor said it was good for me to talk to her like I used to,” I told her.
“I don’t want anyone to make it worse by bringing up people or things she can’t remember,” Grace fretted, and too exhausted to argue, I’d agreed.
But I longed to talk to Julia about something—anything—substantial. Although I knew it was ridiculous, I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I could just have a solid conversation with her, if I could just remind her of old times, she would start to come back.
“I can go for a walk if you girls want,” Grace says, sounding like she doesn’t mean it.
“That would be good,” I tell her. I am not exactly known for my ability to be direct. But over the past few weeks, I’ve made a conscious effort to stop beating around the bush. Life being short and whatnot.
“So what’s on your mind?” I ask, after Grace leaves.
“Welllll,” she says. “I think I’m ready to see people again.”
“Oh, hon. That’s fantastic! I can set something up with the girls,” I tell her, referring to Nina and Sophie, our closest friends. At Grace’s request, they’ve kept their visits to a minimum, but have been anxious to spend time with Julia before she leaves for Michigan.
“Sure,” she says ambiguously.
She pauses to blow her bangs out of her eyes, a new habit. “And I want to see Nathan.”
I feel like I’ve been sucker punched. “Excuse me?”
“I miss him. Don’t you?” she asks, as though it’s not a loaded question.
“I haven’t thought about him in years.” This is a lie. When Julia said his name in the hospital, it unleashed waves of memories that I’ve since been trying to surface from. The one thing I had not considered, however, was that her mentioning him may have been more than a fluke.
“That’s too bad. He’s doing good. Has a new dog,” she informs me in a singsong voice.
“How do you know that?” My mind is reeling. This doesn’t seem like something you could find out via Google, and I know that he and Julia are not Facebook friends. She must have talked to him recently. The realization is like a second blow to my gut.
“You know,” she says, blowing at those damn bangs again.
“Not really.”
She holds up her hands, examining her cuticles carefully. I have always thought that people’s hands match their personalities. Mine are those of a worker: small and nimble, with straight fingers and square nails. Julia’s are slender and beautiful, with long, oval nails that could slice paper.
After a minute, she looks in my direction without meeting my eyes.
“Did I tell you I think Dr. Bauer is in love with me?” It’s not obvious if she is deliberately changing the subject, or if she has lost her train of thought, which happens frequently these days. I tell myself to give her the benefit of the doubt.
But I can’t help but wonder if she has really broken the pact we made over a decade ago. Or if she’s simply forgotten about it.
Five
Julia and her father never did have a showdown about college; as it turned out, she wasn’t accepted to Juilliard or Harvard. Instead, she received a full ride to study dance at Oberlin. Against my better judgment, I stayed in Ann Arbor and went to the University of Michigan, because they gave me more financial aid than any other school I’d applied to.
“We’ll see each other at least once a month,” Julia assured me the night before she was set to drive to Ohio with her parents. We were sitting in her kitchen, sipping celebratory champagne that her father had supplied. “Of course,” I said, clinking my glass with hers, although I had a sinking feeling the next time we’d be face-to-face was winter break. I was, frankly, terrified of being alone. Bolstered by the confidence I gained from my friendship with Julia, high school had been far from the tortured experience I’d expected that first morning at Kennedy. Instead, I’d spread my wings, successfully running for student council, becoming captain of the ecology club, and rising to fourth in my class (two spots behind Julia, who would graduate as salutatorian). And yet in spite of my success, college felt like the great, lonely unknown.
In what I realize now was a self-fulfilling prophecy, I didn’t even make an effort to meet people my first two years. And why should I? I thought to myself. College was just a holding pattern before I touched down in real life. In what I hoped would be four very short years, Julia and I would reunite in New York and begin our careers in dance and publishing.
With this grand plan in mind, I kept my nose buried in a book my freshman and sophomore years and ignored the über-rich East Coast students in my dorm, who were more than happy to return the favor. When I wanted company, I hit the library with Liza, a hilarious but (as Julia dubbed her) “unfortunate-looking” girl from Portland who had befriended me in journalism class. And although Julia was so wrapped up in dance practice and classes that she rarely made it back to Ann Arbor, we called and e-mailed several times a week, which was better than nothing, I decided. Besides, we had the summers to hang out.
My junior year, Ramen noodle dinners ceased to be
a cliché when my scholarship was abruptly slashed by 50 percent because of a budget crisis. I found myself utterly, depressingly broke. Liza encouraged me to apply at the cafeteria where she worked, but I couldn’t bear the thought of scooping mashed potatoes onto the plates of snobby New York girls who would likely throw them up an hour later. Instead, I landed a job at a coffee shop downtown called World Cup. At the very least, I figured I would get free coffee.
It was there I started patching together some semblance of a life again. After two years of near-monastic solitude, I thrived on the buzz and commotion of the busy café. And with the exception of Charlene, my irritable manager, I liked my coworkers: Taryn, who despite seeming perpetually stoned, seemed to know everything about everyone; Ray, a good-natured jock on the six-year plan; and Leila, a Lebanese-American student with razor-sharp wit.
Then there was Nathan. Whose very presence made my knees lock. Whose name I couldn’t say aloud without blushing. Who made the crushes I’d had in high school seem entirely laughable.
“Hey,” he greeted me, saying it as though we’d known each other for years. He wiped his coffee-covered hands on his apron, but instead of shaking my hand, he just looked at me long and hard.
“Uh, hi,” I responded, totally flustered. Pull it together, I scolded myself as I proceeded to fumble through the rest of my shift. He’s not even your type.
But he was. He was exactly my type—I just hadn’t known what that was until he was standing in front of me. Nathan wasn’t remarkable: average height, solid build, hazel eyes. But there was something about the way he cocked one eyebrow when he was listening carefully, the way he smiled with his whole face, the way he seemed to stare straight into my soul, leaving me simultaneously unnerved and filled with longing. He was, I quickly realized, not unlike Julia: the type of person who could charm anyone. But for whatever reason, he seemed hell-bent on charming me. This reawakened my old suspicion that I gave off a distinct “rescue me!” vibe that somehow attracted people like Julia—and Nathan.
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